Putin Signals Work on Arms Control Treaty Day Before Alaska Summit

Tina Fordham, founder at Fordham Global Foresight, discusses geopolitical risks ahead of the Trump-Putin summit Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled his intention to start work on a new arms control treaty with the US a day before a summit with Donald Trump that’s expected to focus on ending the fighting in Ukraine and restoring economic ties.

An agreement on the control of strategic offensive weapons can “create long-term conditions for peace between our countries and in Europe and in the world as a whole,” Putin said Thursday at a Kremlin meeting with senior officials, including his finance minister and central bank chief, ahead of his Friday talks with the US leader in Alaska.

Putin tried to press Trump during his first presidential term to agree to an arms deal but had little success. While Russia has been open to resuming nuclear talks with the US since last year, officials said in June that worsening relations with the US had led to fading chances for a new pact to replace the last such treaty with the US, which expires early next year.

“Putin’s aim is to divorce the issue of the war from bilateral relations including strategic and economic ones,” said Alexander Kolyandr, a London-based senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and former strategist at Credit Suisse Group AG. “The topic of business, energy and financial sanctions seems to be equally if not more important for Putin.”

With the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine now in its fourth year, Russia this month said that it no longer considers itself bound by a moratorium on the deployment of ground-based intermediate and shorter range missiles. Putin said in December that he planned to deploy his country’s Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in Belarus in the second half of 2025.

The Russian leader suspended participation in the New START nuclear treaty in 2023, though Moscow pledged to continue complying with its terms until the accord’s expiration. Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu later said that negotiations on a new accord would have to cover issues including NATO expansion, the US global missile-defense system, and the deployment of ground-based missiles.

Putin heads to Alaska accompanied by economic officials, as well as his defense and foreign ministers, after Trump signaled he was looking to downplay expectations for a full peace deal at the summit. The US president has warned Moscow that he is ready to impose “very severe consequences” if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine.

While the front line isn’t in danger of collapse, Russian pressure is mounting and Moscow’s use of its own offensive “line of drones” known as Rubicon has narrowed Ukraine’s advantage in this field, Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a July 31 assessment on social media following a visit to the front.

“Russian forces continue to adapt, and Ukraine must find ways to stay ahead,” he said.

Russia may be focusing on its advance toward Dobropillya “to set informational conditions” ahead of the summit with Trump, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War. Putin is attempting to frame the seizure of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions “as inevitable to push Ukraine and the West to capitulate to Kremlin demands,” it said in an Aug. 11 assessment.

Even a failure to reach an agreement in Alaska may serve Putin’s interest if it buys him time to continue his offensive while persuading Trump to delay the threatened US secondary tariffs as talks continue on a potential settlement.

Russian forces have captured some 2,400 square kilometers (927 square miles) in Ukraine so far this year, about 0.4% of the country’s territory, according to Bloomberg estimates based on Deep State mapping data.

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